A friend of mine and I got into the argument of who is a better all time hitter, Williams or Bonds UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THAT STEROIDS PLAYED NO ROLE. I argued Williams, he argued Bonds.

Purely stats wise, this is how it is broken down in the order of importance (IMO, although he agreed basically to it anyway). Extra > means it's a bigger margain (i.e. >>> signifies way ahead whereas > signified slightly ahead)

The one other thing that must be taken into consideration is that Williams took off some key years to fight in wars.

But the basic argument boils down to whether the fact that Williams' averages are better, which discounts war time, or if you want to argue that even if Williams didn't miss any time, he still would have way less HR. Also, Bonds leads in more catagories whereas Williams leads in the more important ones. Anyway, let me know what you think, I just figured it's an interesting argument, and I'd like to hear your say.

My vote would go to Teddy Ballgame. He missed some prime years (3 full years at 34-26 years old; and most of 2 years at 34 and 35) because of war. If you go by who had the best career, then you have to say Bonds. However, if you average it out Ted Williams has to win out. .344 career average and then you throw in another 150-200 homers. He would have 700+ homers

Career wise, there is not really anyone that can match Bonds (except maybe Ruth or Cobb) However, Ted Williams (war time), Lou Gerig (early retirement), Mantle (injuries), Griffey (injuries), all have the what if factor. If they had a full healthy career all those guys would have crazy numbers. Bonds has played injury free until 43. Could you imagine what those other guys would have done had they played injury free their whole careers.

Career wise you have to say bonds. He's about to break the all time HR record, has the all time BB record, is 3rd all time in Runs scored (100 runs from Rickey) and 5th in RBI's, and is the only member of the 500-500 club. He also has won 7 MVP's and 8 gold gloves.

The Splendid Splinter pwns Bonds and all other MLBers in the landing burning airplane after getting hit by enemy fire category. His HOF speech is one of my favorite all-time sports moments as well. Williams was probably Bonds' equal in terms of incurring the wrath of the press and may have shot more F-bombs back at them, at least according to his bio (as I presume whatever else Bonds does, use of any such language would be reported upon). Bonds stats are pretty crushing but that does not diminish Williams amazing accomplishments nor the fact that Ted was an amazing character in the history of baseball.

If Bonds played the first game of a doubleheader and was batting .402, would be be back for the second game? I dunno about that. It will be interesting to see what Bonds does in his last AB...

buffalobillsrul2002 wrote:I think it has to be Barry, because of longevity. If you plug in replacement level years for the years Teddy took off, I think Bonds would probably have Teddy beat in OPS and SLG...

Using replacement level stats would be a mistake though...you can't argue that Williams would've put up replacement level numbers during the middle of his career. His OPS+ the year before his time off was 217, and it was 215 the year he came back.

Ted's career OPS+ was 190, compared to that of 183 for Bonds.

I think Barry's first four years tilt the scale towards Williams. His OPS+ was never over 150 in those years. Ted only had one year in his career (at age 40) where his OPS+ was under 150 (and it was only half a season really).

I think as a hitter, Ted gets the nod. If you consider the total package though, Bonds is probably the better overall player (9 gold gloves as a LF is pretty impressive).

4Pack wrote:Yeah I am joking! I would love to have a teamate that plays when he wants to play ala Randy Moss.

So I'll take that as you weren't joking. You do realize that he is on pace to break nearly every offensive record for a 42 year old, including games played? You realize that only Randy Winn has played in more games for the Giants this season? Hard to understand why his teammates put up with his laziness.